A Tuscan Memory Quotes

“This is Giselda’s recipe: Acquacotta from the Maremma Ingredients: Two or three large onions; green vegetables (like cabbage or spinach); tomatoes; one egg per person, toasted bread, some grated pecorino cheese. Put a generous amount of good olive oil from the Maremma into a big pan. Add two or three large onions sliced up and gently fry them. Then turn down the heat and cook until the onions almost go mushy. Add tomatoes cut into pieces and continue to cook, adding herbs such as basil, and some chopped-up celery. When this has all cooked add water (but if there is good broth available, this is better). Boil for fifteen minutes. Fry some toasted slices of bread in a frying pan and sprinkle grated pecorino cheese on top. Add one egg per person (making sure they don’t all join together, so break them into the pan gently). After about one or two minutes, when the eggs begin to set, remove the pan from the fire. Pour the soup into dishes and put the bread and egg on top. We all LOVED the scrummy sweet Fritelle di San Giuseppe that we finished off supper with. Ingredients: Two glasses of water; two dessert spoons of very good olive oil; three dessert spoons of sugar; 250 grams of wheat flour; two whole eggs; one sachet of vanilla sugar (one gram); a pinch of salt; half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, the grated zest of one lemon. In a pan, heat up water, sugar, salt, grated lemon zest and the oil. When it is boiling, remove from the heat and add all the flour immediately and all in one go. Stir very well and until well mixed (this will take about ten minutes). Leave the mix to cool down and then add both eggs one at a time. Mix well. ONLY AT THIS STAGE, add the bicarbonate of soda and vanilla and mix again for another two or three minutes. Pour plenty of oil into a frying pan and heat to boiling point and throw in the mix little by little (about the size of a large walnut). Fry – if the mixture has been properly prepared, it will swell in size immediately – and turn it with a fork so it cooks evenly. Remove from the heat and toss it in sugar immediately and then put on a cloth (to absorb extra fat) and eat when still warm and never cold!”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“One of the older shepherds, a white-haired man called Ulisse, started to sing. His voice was strong, melodic. I recognised the tune. Dove tu te ne vai? Where are you off to? The words were those of a young girl asking her lover if she could come along with him. I’m off to the Maremma, my pretty Rosina, and you can’t come with me, was the reply. My own mother used to sing this tune as she went about her tasks in happier days, before my brother was lost to us. My eyes moistened as I thought of what I’d left behind. A tear escaped down my sun-stung cheeks and I brushed it away, glad of the darkness.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“If I was honest, the work of a cobbler was purgatory to me. I preferred to be out on the hillside, watching over sheep in the fresh air. Most of Nonno’s customers were old shepherds and their feet smelt like ripe cheese. Their work made them walk for kilometres and they seldom had a chance to wash. More often than not, the shepherds’ shoes and feet would be caked in manure and even though Nonno had taught me to wash their footwear three or four times in cold water before working on it, the strong odours still clung. It was a readymade business for me to take on, but I was reluctant.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“I hurried indoors to check on my grandparents. They were clinging together in fear, Nonna wailing and clutching her rosary beads. Nonno thrust a cow bell into my hands, shouting at me to go outside and make as much noise as possible to avert the storm devils. ‘They’ve come to ruin our vegetable plots and maize fields with their evil hailstones,’ he shouted at me. ‘Nonno, no amount of noise will stop what will be,’ I told him for the umpteenth time. ‘It’s only weather; it’s just a storm…’ I tried to calm them down but Nonno and Nonna had been brought up to believe these superstitions. They were too old now to think otherwise. I believed in many of our traditions but I’ve always known that a belief in storm devils was ridiculous. 7”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“By the time I arrived, soaked through, back in Montebotolino, women and children were banging pans together, upturned buckets were beaten with broom stick handles or anything metal they could lay hands on in an effort to ward off the storm. Church bells in the tower of San Tommaso rang their warning to villages along the river Marecchia, babies were crying and a dozen barking dogs added to the bedlam.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“La scuola non da pane, they used to say to me. School doesn’t give you bread. ‘You’re so lucky, Giuseppe,’ I sighed. ‘Seize every opportunity to learn. And use this…’ I said, tapping my forehead. ‘I’ve been taught to read and write but I use my brain too, to think in my own way.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“Anna returned to supper preparations, wondering what on earth she had managed to fill her time with before having children. ‘BC’, they jokingly described it. She loved all of them to bits. But there were times when she longed to escape from the bedlam of family life. Lately she felt constantly tired. Some mornings she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other to confront the day. And she was putting on weight despite being careful with her diet. She worried there might be something seriously wrong, but it was easier to push nagging thoughts to the back of her mind. She craved one week on her own: one week of blissful quiet without the confusion and togetherness Italians craved. To go to bed late if she wanted without a 6 a.m. alarm call. Time to read a whole book in one sitting or drink wine in the middle of the day, without the responsibility of being the afternoon chauffeur to one of her children: for swimming lessons, music clubs, gymnastics and now regional tennis coaching, for which Davide had been selected. And a week of sleeping in a bed on her own might be good, she thought – without having to get up to soothe a child’s nightmares or being kept awake by Francesco’s snores or his hand stroking her thigh, when sex was the very last thing on her mind… ‘Penny for them?’ Francesco had crept up behind her, folding her in a hug, nuzzling the back of her neck as she tried to concentrate on chopping parsley and celery for a meat sauce. ‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ she said, thinking that he really wouldn’t and that she was an ungrateful cow to fantasise about a life without them. ‘Mamma, Babbo, stop it!’ Rosanna and Emilia were trying to insinuate themselves between their parents to break up their embrace. ‘Is supper nearly ready?’ Emilia, always hungry, asked.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory

“He’d heard say that knowledge of the past was important for freeing the future, but how could it be possible to know everything about the past? How many stories had been forgotten over the years? How many secrets or skeletons in the cupboard were lost in time because people were ashamed or felt their past was unimportant.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“I lay my body down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“I wondered how it was possible we could talk about so many subjects – plants, books, livestock and of course little Dario – but we couldn’t talk about us. In my heart there was a storm that needed to break and my heart hurt like thorns on the wild rosa canina growing in the hedgerows.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“wondered how it was possible we could talk about so many subjects – plants, books, livestock and of course little Dario – but we couldn’t talk about us.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“I lifted the lid of the trunk that smelled of lavender, where poor Mamma over time had added item upon item to my wedding dowry.  I hunted beneath linen sheets which had been waiting to be embroidered with nuptial initials and pillowcases, and towels and pot holders all edged with fine crochet,”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“We all LOVED the scrummy sweet Fritelle di S. Giuseppe that we finished off supper with. Ingredients: 2 glasses of water; 2 dessert spoons of very good olive oil; 3 dessert spoons of sugar; 250 grams of wheat flour; 2 whole eggs; 1 sachet of vanilla sugar (1 gram); a pinch of salt; ½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, the grated zest of one lemon. In a pan, heat up water, sugar, salt, grated lemon and the oil. When it is boiling, remove from the heat and add all the flour immediately and all in one go. Stir very well and until well mixed (this will take about 10 minutes). Leave the mix to cool down and then add both eggs one at a time. Mix well. ONLY AT THIS STAGE, add the bicarbonate of soda and vanilla and mix again for another 2 or 3 minutes. Pour plenty of oil into a frying pan and heat to boiling point and throw in the mix little by little (about the size of a large walnut). Fry – if the mixture has been properly prepared, it will swell in size immediately and turn it with a fork so it cooks evenly. Remove from the heat and toss it in sugar immediately and then put on a cloth (to absorb extra fat) and eat when still warm and never cold!”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“Acqua cotta from the Maremma Ingredients: Two or three large onions; green vegetables (like cabbage or spinach); tomatoes; one egg per person, toasted bread, some grated pecorino cheese. Put a generous amount of good olive oil from the Maremma into a big pan. Add 2 or 3 large onions sliced up and gently fry them. Then turn down the heat and cook until the onions almost go mushy. Add tomatoes cut into pieces and continue to cook, adding herbs such as basil, and some chopped up celery. When this has all cooked add water (but if there is good broth available, this is better). Boil for 15 minutes. Fry some toasted slices of bread in a frying pan and sprinkle grated Pecorino cheese on top. Add one egg per person (making sure they don’t all join together, so break them into the pan gently). After about one or two minutes, when the eggs begin to set, remove the pan from the fire. Pour the soup into dishes and put the bread and egg on top.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“But a cobweb is a thing of beauty to me. One of the joys in my life is to go for a walk after it’s rained and the sun comes out. Spiders’ webs are like diamond catchers – with raindrops glistening like tiny precious stones inside the most complex patterns. Spiders are so clever, don’t you agree?”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“Never put your gathered mushrooms into horrid plastic bags…’ ‘Why not?’ ‘You should always use a basket so the mushroom spores fall through the wicker and allow for more mushrooms to grow for another day.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“This above all, to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“There was never enough food at home,’ he said ‘and if anything appeared on the table you had to grab it or it would be gone before you could open your mouth. That’s why I left.”
― Angela Petch, A Tuscan Memory: Italian journeys

“Ingredients: 2 glasses of water; 2 dessert spoons of very good olive oil; 3 dessert spoons of sugar; 250 grams of wheat flour; 2 whole eggs; 1 sachet of vanilla sugar (1 gram); a pinch of salt; ½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, the grated zest of one lemon. In a pan, heat up water, sugar, salt, grated lemon and the oil. When it is boiling, remove from the heat and add all the flour immediately and all in one go. Stir very well and until well mixed (this will take about 10 minutes). Leave the mix to cool down and then add both eggs one at a time. Mix well. ONLY AT THIS STAGE, add the bicarbonate of soda and vanilla and mix again for another 2 or 3 minutes. Pour plenty of oil into a frying pan and heat to boiling point and throw in the mix little by little (about the size of a large walnut). Fry – if the mixture has been properly prepared, it will swell in size immediately and turn it with a fork so it cooks evenly. Remove from the heat and toss it in sugar immediately and then put on a cloth (to absorb extra fat) and eat when still warm and never cold! * Yum!”
― Angela Petch, Now and Then in Tuscany: Italian journeys